Ponhele Died A Swapo Loyalist

THE news caught up with me in Midrand South Africa. My host had a conversation with relatives in Namibia who conveyed the news that Ponhele Ya France had died. When I arrived on the farm on Saturday Minister Ngarikutuke Tjiriange confirmed that the funeral would take place the same day and so I was destined to miss out.

We first met when he worked for the Ministry of Labour. We served together on the Board of the Namibia Communications Commission for three years and then he went to Parliament, a move that signalled his symbolic metamorphosis. He moderated from an outspoken unionist to a sophisticated parliamentary backbencher.Ya France and I started interaction when I applied for an advertised post of Director General at the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) in May of 2006. The post had just fallen vacant and the State was falling around with regard to how best to manage the national public broadcaster. When I was employed as Director General, he took time to get me oriented to the task at hand and we criss-crossed the country, visiting NBC operations. The corporation was in crisis and Ya France made no secret of the fact that the NBC Board was stuck in its tracks with regard to how best to proceed. And the more I asked him challenging questions about his vision of the NBC the more he was honest about the extent of his frustrations and political dilemmas. His take was that Cabinet was divided about how best to proceed with the NBC. The dominant group in Cabinet was not impressed with the fact that I was the successful candidate and he thus did not expect the NBC Board to persuade Cabinet to fund the NBC, more so given the levels of debt and the state of management at the corporation. His view was that unfortunately, the immediate future of the corporation would depend on the extent to which I as new Director General would be visionary as well as enterprising. And so it went: Three days after I assumed duty, Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah plunged me in front of the Cabinet Committee on Treasury and latter expressed their position through Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, that as far as NBC was concerned, no business plan, no funds. I had to be enterprising and for the better part of the ensuing eighteen months the NBC was by and large managed through own initiatives such as re-arresting the hitherto neglected television licence fees and advertising, sales and marketing. Ponhele was right.He stayed the course and we spoke on a daily basis about our views on the NBC, our trials and tribulations, but also our anxieties. In all this time he remained a Swapo Party loyalist in thought and in action. He would never propose a course of action without first discussing it with the line Minister, the Prime Minister or the Secretary General of Swapo. And he always shared with me what they said, whether it was good, bad, right or wrong. Ponhele’s ordeal emerged with the Cabinet reshuffle that took Minister Nandi-Ndaitwah away from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the rest are details of Namibia’s recent history.I shall remember Ponhele Ya France as one of Namibia’s children of the storm. Those who were there for this great nation until the nation had no need for them, or are they? Go well my brother! Go on and tell all the ancestors of this great nation that they must not lose heart because we have kept their faith.